{"id":658,"date":"2009-07-02T10:45:53","date_gmt":"2009-07-02T18:45:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/?p=658"},"modified":"2010-06-10T10:48:52","modified_gmt":"2010-06-10T18:48:52","slug":"plan-now-for-an-evening-primrose-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/2009\/07\/plan-now-for-an-evening-primrose-party\/","title":{"rendered":"Plan now for an evening primrose party"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_659\" style=\"width: 234px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/evening-primrose-flowers.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-659\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-659\" title=\"evening-primrose-flowers\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/evening-primrose-flowers-224x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"224\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/evening-primrose-flowers-224x300.jpg 224w, https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/evening-primrose-flowers.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 224px) 100vw, 224px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-659\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Evening primrose flowers open for a single night. Photo by Ken Moore.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Evening primrose has been flowering in some spots along Carrboro\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s main streets for several weeks. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been trying to capture a photograph because the plants in my yard don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t yet have flower buds, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve not been up early enough in the mornings or out on the streets late enough in the evenings to have succeeded.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, one evening this past week, I boldly knocked on the door of Bill Derey, one of Carr-boro\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s premier gardeners. Bill\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s garden, on the west side of North Greensboro Street near Southern States, has been lit up at night by several evening primroses. I learned from Bill that these flowers don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t fully open until well after sunset. He knows because he invited a friend over to view the evening primrose flower opening and they had to wait and watch until 8:30 p.m. When those brilliant, butter-yellow flowers finally do open to the pleasure of night-flying pollinators, the plants literally glow in the dark. For a photograph, Bill advised that I should return in the early morning.<\/p>\n<p>So there I was the next morning at 6:30, to discover that most of the flowers had already begun closing. This is truly a flower of the nighttime and well worth going outdoors to view. Having several near one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s porch, as Bill has, makes night viewing really convenient.<\/p>\n<p>Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be confused if you hear someone showing off with the Latin name, Oenothera biennis, saying either [ee-noth-EE-ra by-ENN-is] or [ee-NOTH-er-a by-ENN-is], because both pronunciations seem to be acceptable. The first part of the name, the genus, from Greek, means \u00e2\u20ac\u0153wine booty.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Eating the root was thought to increase one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s capacity for wine. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t recommend this, though a number of Native-American tribes used root teas and poultices for medicinal purposes.<\/p>\n<p>The second part of the name, the species epithet, describes the plant as a biennial. It grows as a leafy rosette the first year; the second year, it grows up to 4 or more feet, flowers, sets seed and dies. If you are not a real tidy gardener, new plants will always be present somewhere. In Bill\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s case, he makes certain that he has a few plants coming along each year. He obtained seeds of this wild plant years ago when he lived and gardened a little ways out of town. At his Greensboro Street location, he scattered seed in his back garden, where they thrived until the town\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s deer ate them. Fortunately, the plants moved themselves out to the front-street side, where the deer have let them be.<\/p>\n<p>Bill and I share a long-time appreciation for this native American plant and we have no difficulty recognizing it in its first-year, leafy rosette stage. I generally look for a cream colored mid-vein on each leaf, but Bill simply recognizes the leaf as, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just the way it looks.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_660\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/evening-primrose-in-garden.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-660\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-660\" title=\"evening-primrose-in-garden\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/evening-primrose-in-garden-300x224.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"224\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/evening-primrose-in-garden-300x224.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/evening-primrose-in-garden.jpg 667w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-660\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Evening primrose is the centerpiece of Bill Derey\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s curbside garden at night. Photo by Ken Moore.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>I remember years ago my botany mentor responding similarly when I asked how to recognize a certain oak tree. He replied, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just the way it looks!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Once you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve identified it for yourself, you will most likely remember it that way too.<\/p>\n<p>Evening primroses flower throughout the summer. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m looking forward to having my own evening primrose viewing party in a few weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Evening primrose has been flowering in some spots along Carrboro\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s main streets for several weeks. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been trying to capture a photograph because the plants in my yard don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t yet have flower buds, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve not been up early enough in the mornings or out on the streets late enough in the evenings to have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellanny"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=658"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":663,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658\/revisions\/663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}